Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

kronk wrote:Solar power is cute and gets the granola chicks to take off their panties, but you'd have to cover every square inch of the US to generate enough power to get rid of fossil fuels (not that anyone would notice if you covered North Dakota). If we could make these more efficient, that would be swell.

It's a common mistake to look at each alternate energy source, and consider if it could make up the entirety of our future energy needs, then declare each tech found wanting.

Solar power can't supply all our future energy costs. But it's massive advantage - being able to be produced easily at the source, makes it viable for a significant proportion of our energy needs. It then becomes part of a broad range of energy sources.

ShumaGorath wrote:Except for the massive energy loss in hydrogens creation and transportation. Are you really arguing that if we use small scale sustainable power plants and hydrogen production centers there is a benefit that we somehow lose if we use those same small scale power plants and go directly to batteries? Wasn't your big argument the failures of the U.S. grid to push power over lengthy distances? I'm pretty sure it's a fallacious argument to claim a universal benefit only benefits your side of the argument.

Except the current model for the electric car is to recharge the battery from a socket in your house. Are you now arguing for batteries charged and physically carried to points of sale?

Yeah. It won't be pleasant, but it's a fuel thats going to last a while. I'm also not advocating for it, I'm simply aware of the fact that good intentions and 'hydrogen!' isn't going to make the coal power industry disappear.

Except no-one claimed 'hydrogen!' is going to make coal disappear. Huge investment and significant tech improvements will allow us to stop using coal. The reality is many of the new energy techs will have to

Arpanet was deployed the same year that we put a man on the moon. It has never and never will use satellites as its main medium of data transportation. They are ill suited as a medium.

You've just argued the same pointless minutiae, and ignored the basic argument. Stop it, it's childish.

Not when that new infrastructure has no use before a consumer adoption of a major technology when that consumer adoption is impossible without the infrastructure. The government would have to step in and mandate for distributed hydrogen storage. It's not going to do that for a myriad number of reasons. The invisible hand certainly isn't going to do it.

Except that it happens all the fething time. Building new business networks in anticipation of a new market is what the markets do well.

Here in Australia in the 80s there was a push to use LPG as an alternate fuel. Over a couple of years we saw petrol stations put LPG pumps in place of their accord, in anticipation of the future market.

So hydrogen is viable because we upgrade the power grid and create a new industry for it's transport, but electric isn't because of our old grid. Do you not see how bad that argument is? The new grid would benefit both, and once that "new sustainable energy infrastructure" is in place you now have the choice between ~40% energy loss in the creation, transportation, and sotrage of hydrogen vs ~5% energy loss from electric. This argument is fundamentally flawed.

No, not because it's an old grid, but because it is a grid at all. No grid, no matter how new, can simply remove the loss of power when it's moved over long distances. That's basic science.

Yes, yes it does. Unless you are advocating for backyard hydrogen plants, in which case the energy is still traveling down the grid to get there.

Not if you transport that actual hydrogen. As I've mentioned multiple times. Please read.

Hydrogen storage requires consistent energy input and it's a system that loses energy via thermal loss rapidly. Thats simply not true.

That is not what I've been told about the issue. While energy loss is inevitable in any system, the loss from the transport of hydrogen is miniscule in comparison to the transport of energy over an electrical grid.

And you are arguing the supremacy of a process with an inbuilt energy loss against one that is location specific and predicated on the continued existence of massive inefficiencies in the U.S. energy grid. Not all power grids are so dysfunctional while all hydrogen plants are. If you want to argue that efficiency would rise over time, the same argument can be applied to that of electric grids, which as a matter of necessity will grow more efficient over the next century.

While the electrical grid will no doubt improve, there are basic limits on that improvement. Shipping energy over power lines is incredibly wasteful, and new models need to be developed that sidestep that waste.

They were also made about hydrogen. Interesting thing to note though, is that batteries have actually improved while hydrogen is about the same as it's been since they started putting it in ships and space shuttles.

Yes, and it changed very quickly from one to the other. Technologies are constantly impossible or decades away, until the tech breakthroughs amass, and the market changes just a little, then suddenly we're a few years from commercial viability.

You aren't used to being on the other side of the argument from me sebster. This is how it generally goes, also I wanted to use the laughing horse picture in something.

I'm more bemused that you'd be this much of an ass in a tech debate. I mean, politics is politics and it's going to be rough and tumble, but this is just talking about two competing techs. It's very weird.

Except the current model for the electric car is to recharge the battery from a socket in your house. Are you now arguing for batteries charged and physically carried to points of sale?

Are we arguing past eachother here? I thought your initial argument was a small scale local distribution method for hydrogen powered by sustainable energy alternatives. I was positing that that same local small scale energy system could recharge batteries with virtually no loss, skipping the hydrogen creation process entirely.

Except no-one claimed 'hydrogen!' is going to make coal disappear. Huge investment and significant tech improvements will allow us to stop using coal. The reality is many of the new energy techs will have to

And your argument was that:

No, we would need to find a way to power and re-supply all those vehicles with sustainable energy, or at least energy that is no more polluting than current petrol engines. Which requires an infrastructure refit on the same scale as hydrogen. Seriously, once you consider the nuclear, solar and tidal plants that will have to be built to replace the coal plants, having a petrol station change tanker types is no big deal.

I'm simply arguing that what we need to do is not what we will do. You're a worldly fellow, you should know that coal fired powerplants are actually rapidly rising in number globally thanks to emerging economies like china and india. This is all an irrelevant aside anyway.

You've just argued the same pointless minutiae, and ignored the basic argument. Stop it, it's childish.

Forgive me for not accepting two of the worst examples (both being totally illogical) I've heard in quite some time.

Except that it happens all the fething time. Building new business networks in anticipation of a new market is what the markets do well.

Here in Australia in the 80s there was a push to use LPG as an alternate fuel. Over a couple of years we saw petrol stations put LPG pumps in place of their accord, in anticipation of the future market.

Yep, a quick and easy gas pump retrofit in anticipation of a government mandated push is identical to a massive multinational infrastructural change requiring the adoption of alternative energy standards, the creation of thousands of hydrogen refineries, the construction of transportation and safety methods and standards, followed by the total replacement of several hundred thousand gas pumps all before hydrogen vehicles become commercially viable. Yeah, these are real similar.

Not if you transport that actual hydrogen. As I've mentioned multiple times. Please read.

Although molecular hydrogen has very high energy density on a mass basis, partly because of its low molecular weight, as a gas at ambient conditions it has very low energy density by volume. If it is to be used as fuel stored on board the vehicle, pure hydrogen gas must be pressurized or liquefied to provide sufficient driving range. Increasing gas pressure improves the energy density by volume, making for smaller, but not lighter container tanks (see pressure vessel). Achieving higher pressures necessitates greater use of external energy to power the compression. Alternatively, higher volumetric energy density liquid hydrogen or slush hydrogen may be used. However, liquid hydrogen is cryogenic and boils at 20.268 K (–252.882 °C or –423.188 °F). Cryogenic storage cuts weight but requires large liquification energies. The liquefaction process, involving pressurizing and cooling steps, is energy intensive. The liquefied hydrogen has lower energy density by volume than gasoline by approximately a factor of four, because of the low density of liquid hydrogen — there is actually more hydrogen in a liter of gasoline (116 grams) than there is in a liter of pure liquid hydrogen (71 grams). Liquid hydrogen storage tanks must also be well insulated to minimize boil off. Ice may form around the tank and help corrode it further if the liquid hydrogen tank insulation fails.
The mass of the tanks needed for compressed hydrogen reduces the fuel economy of the vehicle. Because it is a small molecule, hydrogen tends to diffuse through any liner material intended to contain it, leading to the embrittlement, or weakening, of its container.
Distinct from storing molecular hydrogen, hydrogen can be stored as a chemical hydride or in some other hydrogen-containing compound. Hydrogen gas is reacted with some other materials to produce the hydrogen storage material, which can be transported relatively easily. At the point of use the hydrogen storage material can be made to decompose, yielding hydrogen gas. As well as the mass and volume density problems associated with molecular hydrogen storage, current barriers to practical storage schemes stem from the high pressure and temperature conditions needed for hydride formation and hydrogen release. For many potential systems hydriding and dehydriding kinetics and heat management are also issues that need to be overcome.

That is not what I've been told about the issue. While energy loss is inevitable in any system, the loss from the transport of hydrogen is miniscule in comparison to the transport of energy over an electrical grid.

You should read a bit more into the issue then, and again, I accept the loss to electric via the energy grid, but that loss does not exceed the direct energy loss incurred in mass hydrogen manufacture due to the lossy nature of the process. Bare in mind that once you've reaved that 90% level of loss (an extreme rarity) due to the energy grid, it's not like you're getting that power back by not plugging in. It's lost due to impedance in travel, and it's going to disappear regardless. Most energy grids don't have storage mediums for the power they generate so what goes out, typically just circles the wires until it's gone anyway.

While the electrical grid will no doubt improve, there are basic limits on that improvement. Shipping energy over power lines is incredibly wasteful, and new models need to be developed that sidestep that waste.

I don't think switching to an incredibly wasteful energy storage medium like hydrogen, which comes inbuilt with many other dangers (ignoring the infrasructural issues) is the answer.

Yes, and it changed very quickly from one to the other. Technologies are constantly impossible or decades away, until the tech breakthroughs amass, and the market changes just a little, then suddenly we're a few years from commercial viability.

Which makes it strange that you would hold so dearly onto one tech that is currently less efficient and more harmful to the environment then straight gasoline as it's replacement.

I'm more bemused that you'd be this much of an ass in a tech debate.

Then don't tell me that cars predated roads and that the internet needed satellites to prove some hackneyed chicken and egg theory concerning unprecedented rapid infrastructural change being the easy purview of the markets. Don't tell me I'm being childish. Most importantly though, don't keep restating the same argument repeatedly while ignoring my own then calling me out for ignoring your points. I've argued as I always have, I don't change my methods much. You've been much less respectful then your normal posting habits.

I mean, politics is politics and it's going to be rough and tumble, but this is just talking about two competing techs. It's very weird.

I don't see the difference, really. Infrastructural technologies are as much a political football as freedom of speech issues or tax laws. In the end the debate over energy and automotive techs impacts my life significantly more then the debate on wether or not Julian Assange gets thrown in a well or given a ribbon.

kronk wrote:Solar power is cute and gets the granola chicks to take off their panties, but you'd have to cover every square inch of the US to generate enough power to get rid of fossil fuels (not that anyone would notice if you covered North Dakota). If we could make these more efficient, that would be swell.

Actually, the total surface area would be about the size of California according to some random study I read. We also have a very big desert in the southwest that gets quite a bit of sunlight.

I mean yeah....you'd have to build massive infrastructure, but I'd rather see things go this way than YAY HYDROGEN DERP DERP.


Oh god, Shuma and Sebester are writing each other novellas.

Peter Wiggin wrote:

kronk wrote:Solar power is cute and gets the granola chicks to take off their panties, but you'd have to cover every square inch of the US to generate enough power to get rid of fossil fuels (not that anyone would notice if you covered North Dakota). If we could make these more efficient, that would be swell.

Actually, the total surface area would be about the size of California according to some random study I read. We also have a very big desert in the southwest that gets quite a bit of sunlight.

I mean yeah....you'd have to build massive infrastructure, but I'd rather see things go this way than YAY HYDROGEN DERP DERP.


Oh god, Shuma and Sebester are writing each other novellas.

Problem, when you have to transport electricity from the panels, it needs to be converted from DC to AC electric, which results in a pretty significant loss in energy.

Stormrider wrote:

Peter Wiggin wrote:

kronk wrote:Solar power is cute and gets the granola chicks to take off their panties, but you'd have to cover every square inch of the US to generate enough power to get rid of fossil fuels (not that anyone would notice if you covered North Dakota). If we could make these more efficient, that would be swell.

Actually, the total surface area would be about the size of California according to some random study I read. We also have a very big desert in the southwest that gets quite a bit of sunlight.

I mean yeah....you'd have to build massive infrastructure, but I'd rather see things go this way than YAY HYDROGEN DERP DERP.


Oh god, Shuma and Sebester are writing each other novellas.

Problem, when you have to transport electricity from the panels, it needs to be converted from DC to AC electric, which results in a pretty significant loss in energy.

That loss is pretty much consistent with any process though.

Peter Wiggin wrote:

kronk wrote:Solar power is cute and gets the granola chicks to take off their panties, but you'd have to cover every square inch of the US to generate enough power to get rid of fossil fuels (not that anyone would notice if you covered North Dakota). If we could make these more efficient, that would be swell.

Actually, the total surface area would be about the size of California according to some random study I read. We also have a very big desert in the southwest that gets quite a bit of sunlight.

I mean yeah....you'd have to build massive infrastructure, but I'd rather see things go this way than YAY HYDROGEN DERP DERP.


Oh god, Shuma and Sebester are writing each other novellas.

Well if you could seal off New Mexico and fill it up I'd be ok with that.

Stormrider wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:

Stormrider wrote:Another issue with battery powered cars is: What do you do with the batteries after their lives of maintaining charges are over? You get a new one, where does the old one go? To the dump, to leak heavy metals into the aquifer.

Maybe batteries could be recycled, like in Europe.

A battery can only be recycled so many times before its life dries up. Not to mention the mining needed to find the minerals to mal the batteries.

I mean they can be broken up into their constituent parts, and the materials used to make something else. Lots of countries do this for all sorts of items.

@sebster: I'm not saying we shouldn't have solar power or wind power at all, though. Don't get me wrong. Every little bit helps.

It's just that neither are the messiah that shall deliver us from oil dependence that some people claim. (Not saying that you are claiming that.)

Kilkrazy wrote:

Stormrider wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:

Stormrider wrote:Another issue with battery powered cars is: What do you do with the batteries after their lives of maintaining charges are over? You get a new one, where does the old one go? To the dump, to leak heavy metals into the aquifer.

Maybe batteries could be recycled, like in Europe.

A battery can only be recycled so many times before its life dries up. Not to mention the mining needed to find the minerals to mal the batteries.

I mean they can be broken up into their constituent parts, and the materials used to make something else. Lots of countries do this for all sorts of items.

Ah, right-o then.